Adam Stetzer

We’re constantly tuned in to the Internet as well as the new technologies and amenities that spawn from it. Emoji — those little smiley faces and symbols used in your mobile device’s messaging keyboard — used to be used exclusively for text messaging. Their meanings are simple. Unlike shorthand acronyms like LOL, emoji have the ability to convey universal messages, like laughter and joy.

Almost everyone knows that the overwhelming majority (93%) of online experiences begin with a search engine, but when you’re looking to finish off your holiday shopping list, what search engine do you go to? Amazon or Google? In 2012, a Forrester report found that 30% of all online shoppers start research products at Amazon.

In the movie Her, Joaquin Pheonix plays a lonely and heartbroken man who develops strong romantic feelings for his mobile operating system. “Samantha,” as he calls it, speaks to him, listens to him, and ultimately becomes a major part of his life. As technology stands right now, we may not be at the point of making real “human” connections with our mobile devices, but we do talk to them.

If we didn’t have Google Maps, we’d either never leave our homes for fear of getting lost or we’d have to find our physical maps again – neither of which, clearly, are options, so we have to make do with what we have. Roughly 41% of internet users use Google Maps to get directions, check out traffic patterns, and, more realistically, find out how long it takes to walk to the nearest Starbucks.

Imagine a world where Google has no secrets, where all search engines play fair, and where SEO doesn’t have to be synonymous with “page one.” Sound like a fairy tale? The Internet is often cast as the great democratizer, and Google its noble gate-keeper. There’s no doubt that search engines help us easily navigate the web, but we have to remember that Google is a corporation, ...

The words Artificial Intelligence can bring to mind far-fetched, sci-fi ideas and a society where robots have replaced humans. Well, this idea may not be too far off given Google’s recent innovations. Google recently released Magenta, a computer based system that has the ability to create pieces of music.

Recently, Facebook introduced “Deep Text” a text understanding engine that can understand with near human accuracy the textual context of several thousand posts per second, spanning more than 20 languages. The company plans to use this technology to improve user experience on its platform in several ways. Some examples include, [...]

Google has an established reputation for guiding internet users towards sources with the most accurate and relevant information on the web. In order to elevate its Google News feature to meet this standard, Google launched its newest component, the Local Source tag, on Monday, May 9. The Local Source tag highlights the original sources of local stories that have become nationa ...

The bounce rate debate continues… Bounce rates and how they affect a website’s ranking on Google has been discussed, dissected, and dismembered over and over again. As fully transcribed on this site, a conversation between Rand Fishkin, CEO of Moz, and Andrey Lipattsev, Google’s search quality senior strategist, led to a surprising discussion on click and bounce rates affecting search rankings.

In Seoul, South Korea, a Google-created artificial intelligence has been squaring off against a mortal man in the 2,500-year-old strategy game, called Go, that’s several orders of magnitude more complicated than chess. When it was finally over, Google’s AlphaGo won four out of five matchups, making AlphaGo a role model for young artificial intelligences everywhere.

Or ‘how small businesses can learn from the big boys'. Do you own a small business? If so, you’ve likely been told by a marketer, a customer or even a relative that you need a presence on whatever flavor-of-the-month social media site is currently being downloaded onto mobile phones across the country.

Has the slow demise of Black Friday already begun? One business took a pretty interesting approach to this year’s Black Friday shopping extravaganza, and it might just signal a big shift in the way that businesses interact with and market to their customers. The game Cards Against Humanity, a self-described “party game for horrible people … [and] as despicable and awkward a ...

Humans recognize patterns well, and the humans who work at Google have recognized that keywords, backlinks, domain ages, title tags, and meta descriptions are all great factors that can be used to sort and rank websites. Yet recognizing such patterns requires gathering a whole lot of data from which to learn, something humans aren’t so great at.

Most business owners are already well aware that they need a mobile-friendly website. It's no longer simply the information provided by a site that matters to prospective customers and to Google, it's how that information is presented. Poor presentation, as well as a dearth of information, can actually drive prospects away and straight toward the competition.

Understanding Google search - the Webmaster guidelines, the PPC platform, the relentless algorithm updates, and so on - is part of the job description for those of us in the digital marketing field. Small business owners didn't sign up to be online marketers - but they are. Thousands of digital marketing agencies are standing by ready to do the job, but many small business o ...

Over at Entrepreneur, Jayson DeMers wrote a controversial SEO guide that is technically correct, but potentially misleading to small businesses. His thesis is pretty straightforward: "The happier your users are when they visit your site, the higher you're going to rank." Simply put, you don't need advanced technical skills to do SEO right.

During a Portuguese video chat earlier this month, Google's Diogo Botelho made some confusing remarks about links. He said that webmasters should never ask for links. Originally, the statement was translated as, "webmasters should not buy, sell, exchange or ask for links." The part about not even asking for links created quite a stir in the SEO community.

Some would say that the Internet is the great equalizer, that every business, large and small, has an equal shot at page one rankings and with that, web traffic, leads, sales, and growth. But, larger, more established businesses have the benefit of people searching for them by name. They're going to get organic traffic and they're going to get organic links by just being there.

Google's "company philosophy" states "Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value." Over the last two years Google has rolled out a series of algorithm updates and public relations tactics that have lead the SEO industry to question this fundamental premise.

Most search marketing agencies don’t have clients with astronomical marketing budgets. It’s a rare day when an agency lands a client like Proctor & Gamble, which in 2013 spent $234 million on Internet marketing. What you could do with a chunk of change like that! Chances are, you get pumped when a client comes in with a few thousand to spend every month.